King of Calypso

Fast rising in U.S. jukebox popularity this week is a macabre little ditty about a woman's right to kill a man with a frying pan, since he was "nobody but my husband." Sung by Ella (A Tisket, a Tasket) Fitzgerald, Stone Cold Dead in the Market has sold over half a million records. It is climbing into the big ten on the Hit Parade even though it is banned on two networks--NBC and ABC--because murder is nothing to brag about.

Stone Cold Dead is the biggest Calypso hit since Rum & Coca-Cola (TIME, Jan. 29, 1945). It is also the first big success of 45-year-old Wilmoth Houdini, a Brooklyn-born Trinidad Negro who lives in Manhattan's Harlem half the year, the other half in Trinidad. Houdini, who has recorded 800 Calypso songs, expects to make $40,000 from it.

Wilmoth Houdini (real name: Edgar Leon St.-Clair) calls himself King of Calypso, a title sought after by rivals with such imposing titles as The Lord Executor, The Lord Invader (Rum & Coca-Cola), The Senior Inventor, King Radio, Attila the Hun, The Growler and The Caresser. All of them are old hands at dashing off musical comments on world affairs and local scandals, in Latin-African rhythms as insistent as radio commercials, and in the oddly distorted British accent of the British West Indies.

Houdini claims to have won every Calypso "war" since 1920. The Calypso Carnival held on the two days before Ash Wednesday is now a major tourist attraction in Port-of-Spain, with each of the rival kings setting up headquarters in bamboo tents, and challenging each other to sing-downs composed on the spur of the moment.

Houdini's method is to rile his opponent by musical insults. He won his first war by being so insulting to two opponents at the same time that, after 45 minutes, they stopped to congratulate him on his virtuosity. His toughest battle was against the old Master, Lord Executor, until he found a fatal weakness to sing about: Executor's big toe had just popped out of his canvas sneaker.

Flight of Wordages. Houdini generally stays out of trouble by not criticizing Crown officials (one rival's song went: "I must be very frank and say, I was glad when Sir Hollis went away"). His Stone Cold Dead describes a murder in Port-of-Spain's Grass Market in 1939. He recorded it himself in 1939 (as He Had It Coming) but it got no popularity until Songstress Fitzgerald unearthed it this spring. Other Houdini songs have had such innocuous themes as I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones and Roosevelt Opens World's Fair. The time King George ate hot dogs with the Roosevelts at Hyde Park moved him to this song:

King George did not use his knife and fork

He said I will do nothing of the sort

So he held hot dog in his hand

And face hot dog man to man.*

Houdini's own favorite of all his compositions is Douglas MacArthur, a Brave Son of America. Like all the rest, its lyrics fit his first rule of composition. Says Houdini: "A Calypsonian is required to be high flown in his wordages."

*Copyright, 1939, Decca Records, Inc.

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